Book 40: The Absolutist

The Abosolutist

John Boyne

The most poignant images of World War I, forgotten as it is, remain with us today, as we imagine young men gearing up for horrors they- and the world- couldn't possibly expect, only to be mown down by the hundreds of thousands while racing from trench to trench in an often futile battle for inches or yards. All wars, and many other situations besides, breed fear, but something about the First World War seems especially suited for the study of fear and its effects on human emotions and behavior. Fast-forward to today's expanding exploration of queer narratives, modern sensibilities about pacifism and non-combatants, and add it to the continuing fascination with the trenches, and John Boyne's novel The Absolutist is one result, a not-quite-revisionist story of love, fear, and the lasting effects of war and associated guilt. The first-person narrative moves seamlessly from past-tense 1919 to present-tense 1916, with each tense lending an appropriate sense of reflection or urgency, respectively. The novel is imbued with a sense of regret and sadness, not unique to war narratives and indeed hardly unusual for a book about World War I, and it becomes obvious from the beginning that this regret will serve as the driving force behind the story, and little clues scattered throughout allow the reader to slowly put the pieces together just before the narrator does, producing a sometimes-satisfying, sometimes-frustrating conversation between the reader and the book. Following the story just ahead of the actual story can help put various pieces into their emotional context, but it also results in some intended big reveals losing the punch that would make this novel absolutely excel. By the time the war story reaches its inevitable conclusion, that conclusion feels not only inevitable but painfully obvious, putting the book off-pace and robbing it of the raw emotional power on which it relies.

That this is followed by an entirely unsatisfactory and utterly off-putting coda does a disservice to the book's characters and readers alike, forcing a particular reading of the novel that may not please all readers. There certainly isn't anything wrong with an author taking a particular view of a work, or indeed a character reacting in an understandably reactive, self-pitying way to a turn of events, but the final lines of The Absolutist seemed to me to be a particular critical reading shoehorned into the novel. This does an enormous disservice to readers, who are thus prevented from honestly reacting to a heretofore ambiguous chain of events and who are instead forced to glean a specific moral meaning to the story, one which I simply did not believe had been there. The narrator (and author, and even many readers) may indeed have believed it, but the way in which John Boyne portrays that realization unfairly casts a stone-hard interpretation on the preceding novel, which would otherwise serve as an intriguing point of contention. By setting a queer story in an overtly un-queer time, Boyne invited controversy and debate, and the war narrative's closing line of dialogue seems to set up a forever-ambiguous point of personal contention for the narrator and for readers alike, only for this delicately balanced nuanced to be blown away, somewhat literally, by a clumsy epilogue. The utterly silly post-facto framework could even be excused if not for this great literary sin, which immediately re-casts the novel, which should be placed in nothing sturdier than sand, into solid stone. It may be difficult to separate my personal (and, obviously, quite unfavorable) reaction from Boyne's intent and actual words on the page, but the effect of reading the final pages greatly diminished the novel in my eyes, turning something beautiful and poetically tragic into self-serving whining. Again, this is not uncharacteristic for the narrator or the book's various genres (war story, novel of mourning, etc.), but its handling seems to unfairly foreclose discussion and debate. Expected sad ending aside, this ending is simply rotten.

Does the poorly executed conclusion sully the entire reading experience? Not necessarily. IT does force readers like me to reconsider their reactions, and it invites re-readings and re-examination, if not in the way Boyne may have intended. It is difficult to erase what was to me a terrible ending, but Boyne does successfully juggle real-time war and retrospective pathos throughout the book. He often tips his hand just a bit too early, but the cards are solid, and the characters are realistic and generally sympathetic, even if they appear a bit convenient to modern readers and contemporary politics. The book feels like, but functions well as, an old war story tailored for the present generation. The Absolutist is, despite a lackluster finish, a compelling story of love and betrayal, life and loss, the First World War and its aftermath for its soldiers and for those they sometimes left behind.

Grade: A-